It was a bluff to try and preserve the orders prestige and like all good bluffs the only one aware of it was the elder that set it up to begin with. It was done in such a way as well that it was an extremely convincing one as well as even Dumbledore believed it. On the other side of the world however there was another man with two different colored eyes that had seen it with his own seer abilities and scoffed at it. That wasn't to say Grindelwald couldn't appreciate the depth of the bluff merely that he knew how pointless it was.-

He had observed much of Nick's actions long before he ever even thought of them using his seer powers and had long since deduced the boys personality. Nick was fairly peaceful all things considered as he rarely ever actively sought someone out to harm them but instead waited for his enemies to come to him before destroying them. If an animal needed to be chosen to represent him then Grindelwald would say Nick was much like a phoenix or thunderbird in attitude. He was slow to anger and proud of all he had but was a force to be reckoned with if angered to violence.-

As such Grindelwald thought it only fitting that the boys Animagus form be the offspring of both that was nobler than any other bird. If anything though Grindelwald was apologetic towards Nick and those he sacrificed for his grand ritual. For Nick it was because he knew what he would unleash upon the earth by doing this but believed it was the best option for wizarding kind despite this. For his victims it was because he made a point to learn the fate of all he sacrificed should he not have and thus was truly sorry for ripping that future away from them , for the greater good.-

None of this mattered to Nick however as he was focusing heavily on digesting the information within the daedric book. One might ask how it could take so long to read a book but there was a difference between understanding the contents and merely reading the words written. It was a bit like a cookbook full of recipes when you didn't know what the ingredients , units of measurement and techniques for the recipes were. Sure you could still read and even memorize the recipes themselves but you couldn't make any of them despite that.-

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What Nick was doing was slowly learning what the terms used in the book meant and slowly piecing together all the details into usable form as a result. This was a slow process but one that he was more than willing to subject himself to because the reward was well worth it. With the abomination dead and gone and the order silent Nick finally had peace to just strive towards his goals as he himself had nothing pressing to worry about.-

This didn't mean that nothing happened as he steady drew closer to fully understanding the contents of the daedric book however. In fact the exact opposite was true as Harry had unknowingly crossed into tier one which was to say his mana quantity had reached the same level as the average Hogwarts graduate. His skill was nowhere near that point though but Nick expected as much since while talented Harry simply didn't have the drive to push himself to the fullest. He had no reason to as Voldemort was dead and as far as he was aware that was the only thing that was really his problem to deal with.-

Nick agreed that was actually true for the most part since Grindelwald was technically not an issue while the returning gods were firmly his own problem to solve , with help of course. Another interesting thing that happened was that Nick had been invited by Vlad and the royal vampires to a ball held on Beltane. It was the only time they were all present at the same location at once and while that might seem like a vampire hunters wet dream it very much wasn't. One or two royal vampires could be handled by a skilled hunter but one or two HUNDRED? Not a snowballs chance in hell would that go well for the hunters.-

Nick wasn't the only non vampire invited to the ball either as quite a few others were likely to be there as well. The Flammels , various old wizards from around the world and there was even a possibility of Grindelwald himself being there since the man was on good terms with Vlad. Nick figured he would go either way simply because it was a good opportunity to relax and expand his network of contacts for the future.